Empty nest is the challenging season of life that parents go through when their children leave home. While it’s a mixed bag of emotions under any circumstances, many military parents have an especially hard time of it because the distance between them and their adult children isn’t measured so much by miles as it is by experience.
My wife and I are part of that group. Since our son recently deployed for the second time, after moving with his family to the west coast, we’ve been thrown into the empty nest years with a vengeance and are learning first-hand how great the distance can be between parents and their adult children. But we’re also learning how to overcome it, and maybe our experience can encourage other empty nesters, civilian as well as military.
All this became crystal clear to me the other night when our son Facetimed us. Our call was mainly spent doing the normal parent thing of checking on his health, asking about his activities and getting acquainted with his friends. He lives in a different world than we do, and we needed to get our minds settled. When it came time to hang up, though, the conversation veered in an unexpected direction that made me realize how the distance between wasn’t as great as I thought it was.
I asked him to send us a picture. He refused. I asked again. “I don’t do selfies,” he said in a condescending tone. I needed to see what he looked like for my own peace of mind, so I switched tactics. “Your mom misses you badly and wants to keep your picture with her,” I said. A dad who won’t lie in order to get a picture of his son on active duty doesn’t want one bad enough. “Not even for her,” my son said. He might have smirked, seeing through my manipulation. “Whatever,” was the best response I could come up with. We hung up. Three minutes later my phone pinged with an incoming text. A moment later my wife’s phone did the same. It was him, of course, sending us the selfie I had asked for. Manipulating children is a good idea even after they grow up.
He’s sitting at his desk in his barracks wearing an old tee-shirt. His hair is curling out from under a ratty baseball cap. Since he’s been over there, he’s grown a beard that’s somehow turned out red. He’s making a face, with one eye closed and the other half open, like a deranged Viking aboard a long ship. Pam and I looked at the picture and burst out laughing at the same moment. Growing up, my son and I loved to read the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbs,” and one of our favorite episodes was when Calvin’s mother ordered him to eat his green beans. Calvin didn’t dare refuse, but his expression in the comic strip was clear about what he thought about green beans. I don’t know that our son was consciously imitating Calvin, but he could have been. His selfie captured the essence of Calvin’s inner spunk in a way that lightened our hearts. More to the point, it connected the little boy we raised with the man our son’s turned out to be. Today, he’s just more of what he was when he was five.
I realized the distance between parents and their adult children may not be as great as empty nesters are led to believe.
Your child may live across the country where they’re involved in a lifestyle radically different than they were brought up in, and their choices have separated you from them. Or they may live on the other side of the state but you don’t see them much because of the demands of their careers or families. Or maybe they live around the corner but your relationship is frayed because they’re wrestling with problems like divorce or addiction that are so opposed to what you believe that if feels as if you’re speaking different languages when they try to tell you what they’re going through.
However the distance between us and our adult children is experienced, the truth is that every empty nester has to deal with it. The challenges military parents face are the same as any other parent of an adult, they’re just more obvious. Read more about What Military Families Can Teach the Rest of Us in a previous blog.
Here are a few things my wife and I are learning about the empty nest years and overcoming the distance between us and our adult children:
First, practice the art of listening. Pam and I have learned that the more we wait and allow our son to take the initiative in talking, the more we’re able to talk about things that really matter.
Second, don’t give advice unless asked for. When our kids were little I gave them specific directions about the choices they faced. Now that they’re grown I just smile and nod a lot. My kids tell me they like the new me a lot better.
Third, trust what your taught them when they lived under your roof. Quit second-guessing how you raised your children and trust what you taught them as children to bear good fruit.
Fourth, keep in mind that the adult before you now is still the child you raised at home. Family relationships may go through seasons, but our connection as empty nesters with our children doesn’t end when they grow up. Whatever the distance between us, there are creative ways we can work to keep them close.
Thanks to ABC News for the picture at top